A Place to Stand

Comments from Scotland on politics, technology & all related matters (ie everything)/"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."Henry Louis Mencken....WARNING - THE LIBERAL DEMOCRATS HAVE DECIDED THAT THIS BLOG IS LIKELY TO BE MISTAKEN FOR AN OFFICIAL PARTY SITE (no really, unanimous decision) I PROMISE IT ISN'T SO ENTER FREELY & OF YOUR OWN WILL

Saturday, October 27, 2012

Global Warming Debate - Tuesday 7.30

I hope some of you will make it. It is an important subject and one where the mainstream media normally censor dissent. If you can it would be helpful if you could email robermal@yahoo.com & confirm. Neil Craig (UKIP Glasgow)

"This meeting believes there is no evidence of catastrophic warming remotely as catastrophic as the regulations, taxes and other costs imposed to ameliorate it".

Unfortunately not a single Scottish MSP (who voted unanimously to impose the most restrictive and expensive "global warming" legislation in the world is willing to speak for their alleged beliefs.

Nor a single employee of the various quangos and government funded fakecharities (Scottish Renewables, Carbon Trust, WWF, BBC etc) who receive £ billions to promote the scare. However questions will be taken from the audience so you are going to get a far more honest debate than will ever see on the BBC

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List of Global Warming Alarmists who refuse to debate the warming claims they are using to take hundreds of billions of £s from us.

All 129 MSPs

All 5 party organisations

SEPA

Scottish Natural Heritage

Scottish Civil Service

The Carbon Trust

NERC (a quango you've never heard of but it gets £500 million a year to promote alarmism & did previously call for a debate)

Scottish Renewables

Renewable UK

Any of the 5,000 RenewablesUK Conference attendees in Glasgow that day to "network" for windmillery"business opportunities"

Professor Ann Glover (former Chief Scientific Adviser to the Scottish government, now to the entire EU, who once claimed that global warming would increase day length)

Royal Society of Edinburgh

and some individuals we won't embarrass by naming.

Between them these get several billions a year to promote alarmism

Also Glasgow University

Strathclyde University

Glasgow Caledonian University

The BBC

Channel 4

Glasgow Skeptics (spelled that way to avoid being confused with sceptics)

The environmental correspondents across the Scottish press

By all the rules of public debate when one party withdraws the other wins by default.

By all logic this unanimity of the warming alarmist community statistically proves they know the catastrophic warming scare story is a fraud to keep us obedient & willing to pay more taxes and ever higher electricity bills & that it simply cannot survive free debate.

It also shows most of the MSPs & state funded propagandists who ever appear on the state owned broadcaster know that on the BBC there will be no free speech - that any appearance will be slanted and censored on their behalf & dissidents banned.

If the BBC wishes to become the "balanced" news reporter their charter requires, rather than a totalitarian propagandist and censor, UKIP guarantees to produce speakers any time they want to allow free debate and end their censorship.

Friday, October 26, 2012

Letter - Spiked

This appears to be exactly the same argument as to whether peaceful picketing of factories during strikes should be allowed.

The comparison with the right to eject hecklers from a meeting is not valid precisely because that is inside the property or rented property of those running the meeting (though actually councils often make it a condition of electoral meetings in public buildings that nobody can be excluded). Nobody is suggesting that abortion opponents should be allowed to enter the clinics while the abortion is taking place, just as nobody says unions should be allowed to picket inside factories when the management refuse.

As Furedi admits, she is attempting to roll back something which has been happening, freely, for years.

Thursday, October 25, 2012

Obama - Given Time the Benghazi Bodies Float To The surface

Here's one thing we can be sure of about the Benghazi affair: almost everything we've been told since by the mainstream media is a lie, invariably one designed to shore up the creaky and desperate Obama administration.

Consider how quickly the story was spun by Obama's amen corner in the liberal MSM. It should, according to any objective news sense, have been a shocking tale of how a woefully unprotected ambassador was murdered in cold blood by Al Qaeda affiliates
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My comment:

Jerry Pournelle uses his military experience to show how, with the attack on the "consulate" taking 7 hours, it would have been easily possible to fly in a marines detachment had "the One" had the gumption to make a decision on the matter.

Another point totally unmentioned by our media is the reports that Ambassador Stevens was raped by the gunmen before being killed - this seems similar to the treatment of Gadaffi by our democracy loving allies. The official government line is that he died of smoke inhalation & the picture showing him conscious and in the hands of his captors are to be ignored.

Last night Greta van Sustern of Fox News showed a printed copy of an eMail from the State department delegation in Libya that apparently went to the situation rooms in both the White House and the State Department in Foggy Bottom. It stated quite clearly that the consulate in Benghazi was under attack by armed terrorists with AK-47 rifles and RPG’s. This was about two hours into the attack. There was no mention of any protests against any video.

We do not usually do breaking news here, and we certainly do not have all the data; but it does seem to me that the President certainly knew by Wednesday morning 12 September that the attack on the Benghazi consulate was an organized attack by a terrorist organization – or at least that such an organization was claiming it.

We also have reason to believe that the White House was aware of the attack within two hours of its beginning. The attack continued for some seven hours, and at least two of those killed were killed in the last hours.

The United States maintains forces that could have reached Benghazi by helicopter within two hours from Italy. I do not have a list of other assets in the Mediterranean, but it does appear that we had some resources in the area. They were not sent.

From the first debate:

"ROMNEY: And there was no demonstration involved. It was a terrorist attack and it took a long time for that to be told to the American people. Whether there was some misleading, or instead whether we just didn’t know what happened, you have to ask yourself why didn’t we know five days later when the ambassador to the United Nations went on TV to say that this was a demonstration. How could we have not known?

But I find more troubling than this, that on — on the day following the assassination of the United States ambassador, the first time that’s happened since 1979, when — when we have four Americans killed there, when apparently we didn’t know what happened, that the president, the day after that happened, flies to Las Vegas for a political fund-raiser, then the next day to Colorado for another event, other political event.

At that time the official US position was that the attack on our consulate was a demonstration against a U-Tube video defaming the Prophet Mohammed PBUH that got out of hand. That was still the official position of the United States Department of State – and one presumes the White House – as late as Sunday September 16 when the US Ambassador to the UN declared it on several Sunday news shows."
As of now there has been no statement from the White House in explanation.
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Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Nuclear Radiation Scare Links

A commenter elsewhere has given a link to my collected links on the Linear No Threshold scare story - that there is no lower limit at which radiation is safe - on which virtually the entire anti-nuclear movement depends. In my opinion this scare story for which there has never been any evidence & an increasing amount of evidence that low level radiation is beneficial, has been considerably more damaging to humanity than even the catastrophic warming fraud. He also provided a couple of other links:

“What is the general feeling among people in your line of work,” I asked, “about whether the dangers of nuclear radiation are being exaggerated?”
There was a sullen silence until one volunteer finally put up his hand. “We don’t really have any choice in the matter,” he said. “We have to do what the regulators tell us. The powers that be say there is no safe dose of radiation so we have to guard against any emissions whatever, no matter how small.”

A couple of other people gave dispirited seconds to his remarks, but one more outspoken audience member, a sales representative for the western United States, finally spoke out. “You know,” he said, “we really ought to do something about this. We know the dangers of radiation are highly exaggerated and we know that the public is being misled on this issue. There ought to be some way we could reach the public on this issue. We ought to put out a statement or something.”....

As one attendee explained to me at the cocktail hour afterwards, “Ever since the earliest days of nuclear power there’s been a general aura of fear surrounding the issue of radiation. People are just scared of it and scientists in the field really don’t like to talk about it much. That’s why we call ourselves `health physicists’ instead of `radiation specialists.’”

It’s sad to see an entire profession so badly cowed, afraid to confront the public over something they firmly believe. But of course the reaction is more than likely to be that the profession has been “bought by the nuclear industry” and that radiation specialists are callously willing to endanger the public “for profit.”
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While there are what Feynman called "cargo cult scientists" who push this scare story it is, by definition, impossible for any real scientist, who understands and respects scientific principles to. Unfortunately politicical parasites far prefer funding the former.

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

"EVERYBODY at the BBC is a liar and the moral equivalent of child rapist gang members. This is so well known no further evidence is needed."

If you think that statement isn't completely balanced you would be wrong. Let me prove it.

The BBC Charter says its reporting has to be balanced - it's a legal duty. The BBC broadcast almost exactly that accusation about those of us who doubt that we are experiencing catastrophic global warming. A number of us sceptics wrote to the BBC gently suggesting they either provide some evidence for what is obviously an obscene attack on (what some polls say) is most of the people of Britain, or retract it. The BBC decided not to bother replying and not to retract.

QED. If such behaviour is balanced then the opening line is too. Indeed a lot more justified since it isn't wholly gratuitous. As the BBC obscenity was.

In a free society the justification for "public service broadcasting" can only be that it serves the public better than a free market would. There is some justification for that - a free market in media means it is owned by rich people. Though, if they are making money from their media ownership they have to defer to the wishes of their poorer customers, as Murdoch has so successfully done.

But who does state owned media defer to?

Researchers at Harvard compiled a report Who Owns the Media on the extent and effects of state ownership of the media worldwide. While only 29% of newspapers worldwide are state owned 64% of broadcast news is. By that standard, with 4 terrestrial channels giving news (i.e. excluding C5) we are at about 75% - not that much worse than the world average. But compared to developed countries and even moreso comparing us to the anglosphere, where freer media are the norm, the disparity is stark.

But is public service broadcasting not a desirable and necessary way to inform the nation? Well not according to the research -

"We find that government ownership of the media is greater in countries that are poorer, have greater overall state ownership in the economy, lower levels of school enrolments, and more autocratic regimes"

and

"Countries with greater state ownership of the media exhibit lower life expectancy, greater infant mortality, and less access to sanitation and health system responsiveness. Private media ownership is associated with health as well as economic and political outcomes, which is consistent with the public choice but not with the public interest theory"

and

"the data reveal ... no benefits of state ownership".

Public choice theory is an academic hypothesis that politicians and civil servants, whatever they say, actually serve their own interests rather than the public's (cynical non-academics have been known to suggest the same). Unfortunately the academics, using statistical evaluations, have a large body of evidence, worldwide, that this is indeed the case.

But is the BBC not the outstanding beacon of purity in a naughty world? Does its legal duty of balance mean nothing?

If every other bit of propagandising (the EU; promoting bombing foreigners; pushing the hacking story, which everybody including the Guardian had been doing for years, just when Murdoch was about to expand Sky into a real competitor; proposing more government as the answer to all problems; interviewing only "dissidents" in Russia; and Democrats in America) could be justified - there is one that cannot.

Censorship and propagandising in British party politics. If our parties are stifled by censorship and dishonest coverage what sort of "democracy" do we have?

You can easily check how corrupt, in the interests of particular parties, the BBC is. Or you can follow my investigation. Comparing the number of hits Google gives BBC and party name gives a very rough estimate of how often they cover it. Balance that with the proportion of people who vote for them. If the BBC's coverage was attempting balance it would cover all parties proportionately to their support. We all know coverage of the Greens is always supportive and of the BNP always critical but this at least shows one form of bias.

The results show that the Greens at get far and away the most coverage per vote received, Labour 1/8th as much, the Conservatives 1/16th, the LibDems 1/22nd, the BNP 1/10th and UKIP 1/40th (the SNP gets 1/5th the Green amount compared to the UK total, but if you Google outside Scotland results may differ).

I did this exercise in 2011 based on the election results. With UKIP rising and the Greens falling in the polls this understated the bias then and moreso now.

That means even on pure coverage terms the BBC is showing itself 97.5% propagandists between UKIP and the Greens who are both minority parties. The relatively high BNP coverage shows the limits, not of BBC bias, but of this simple way of measuring.

I don't think the greatest supporter of state owned media could deny that BBC coverage of the BNP consists of throwing shit at them. Indeed this is one of the assumed justifications of its coverage. On pure airtime they do OK but it isn't the obsequious coverage we all see of the approved parties.

Those of us who want free media that reports without fear or favour, must face the BNP issue. Like pregnancy it is still censorship when it is only of a little bit.

Personally I think that a party that opposes bombing small countries; doesn't want more government control to fight "global warming"; doesn't support taking over Libya; wasn't keen on setting ethnically cleansed successor states across Yugoslavia run by WW2 Nazis and supports Israel's right to self defence would be chucked out of any self respecting Fascist organisation. The BBC is on the other side on all of these positions and would presumably be welcomed with open arms were it a party.

If our media, or at least the most influential parts of it, are simply the modern version of Orwell's Ministry of Truth (Orwell worked for the BBC and the satire is obvious but still not dated) then we do not live in a real democracy. The BBC itself has often used this argument to say Russia isn't a "real" democracy (the control is actually less thorough - they have a legal right to airtime for opposition politicians) and can hardly object to it now.

Because genuine opposition is stifled we are in economic decline. When did you last see a supporter of more economic freedom allowed on air? When did you even see an admission of how much our economy is underperforming the world average? When do we ever see true formal debate allowed on ANY subject?

I hope we will see more discussion of this subject. It underlies almost every other political question. Perhaps somebody in the BBC may feel able to disagree. If so that would be good. Finding truth depends on testing theories against each other.

At the very least the BBC should retract the obscene lie about those that challenge catastrophic global warming discussed at the start of this article.

Sunday, October 21, 2012

Shetland News - Tunnels Letter & Stuff About Media Propagandising

In July I wrote here of the possibility of connecting the main Shetland islands by tunnels. If done at the costs the Norwegians have done it, the total cost of road linking all the main islands would be about £80 million – a quarter of the long term cost of a couple of ferries (Letters of 29 July and 20 July).
In response Michael Craigie, manager of transport planning confirmed (Letter of 27 July) that the council were absolutely committed to providing such fixed links and that a decision on how to go about it was to be expected in their meeting in September.
Perhaps the council will confirm that they are now in the process of getting a firm quote and making it public.

Neil Craig
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This week Question Time was in Glasgow. A number of UKIPers, including myself, applied to be in the audience & to be fair to the BBC, 3 got through (but not me) which is probably about 1 1/2% of the audience. (latest polls show us with 8% support). For the 4th week running no member of Britain's 3rd party, UKIP, was on the panel though the 4th Party, the LibDems has been 0n 3 times.

That the hundreds of millions dying from starvation promised was a lie isn’t the point.

That every single catastrophje prediction across the entire “environmental” movement was a lie isn’t the point.

Because concern for the environment itself isn’t the point of the “environmental movement” at all – it is simply a flag to fly.
The point is that they are Luddites who are scared of human progress, because they think they aren’t up to understanding it, and will tell absolutely any lie to scare people and hopefully get the government to give them a privileged position or pay them Danegeld as well.
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On "Liberal Conspiracy" I asked about economic liberalism.

UKIP’s economic policy is to cut back government spending to, after inflation, where it was in 1997, stop subsidising windmills, let the electricity industry use as much nuclear and shale gas power as gthere is a market for, get rid of the most serious regulatory restrictions on wealth production and of the restrictive EU. This would get us to the 6% growth rate the rest of the non-EU world ia achieving.
Since this is what is called liberal economics I thought I would ask if there is anybody here who can give any reasons (not simply explaining that they don’t like it) why this would not work?

"The polls confirm that the economy is the overriding issue to most people. The rising cost of living and unemployment dominate as concerns. People have been very worried about the price of fuel and energy, fares and Council tax, all items that goverment has considerable influence over"

" If we had uncensored media, particularly TV, where most people get most of their news, we would see considerable movement in opinion away from the positions the BBC/C4 state broadcasters hold.
This obviously applies to the EU where the case for withdrawl is overwhelming in economic terms and almost wholly censored by the BBC.
On immigration the unmentioned fact is that we do not have the power to stop immigration from within the EU. While it is now widely known, except by those who get all their news from the state broadcasters that Labour deliberately promoted mass immigration the fact that Cameron’s promise to cut it back to “thousands” was wholly dishonest as long as we remain in the EU is not so widely appreciated.
That throughout the “world recession” world growth has been 5% & that we could get out of recession in days if the political class were not deliberately keeping us in it is never mentioned by the lamestream media and therefore not widely known."